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Monday, November 15, 2010

Craft (and Cupcake!) Crawl 2010

This past weekend, my friend Lara came to visit me and we undertook our much-anticipated, first-ever Craft Crawl around Manhattan. Our goal was to hit as many craft supply or craft inspired places as we could. We had one baking supply place on our list too and, of course, since I was involved, I had to add some cupcake stops into the mix.

First, we hit the 25th Street flea market. I have to say that this was my least favorite stop of the day. It was a little disappointing and didn't inspire either of us to dig through the jumble to stuff to hunt for hidden gems.

The most interesting thing we saw there were these boxes of old slides. Their hand-written labels said things like "Sturbridge Village, 1962" or "The girls at camp". I'm sure they'd be really interesting and kitschy to look at for any vintage voyeurs who still have slide projectors.

Then we got thirsty and stopped for a little refreshment:

(Just kidding.) Our real next stop was NY Cake and Baking Supply, which sells every kind of professional baking supply item imaginable, including racks and racks of cookie cutters and shelf after shelf edible flowers for cake decorating. According to the store's celebrity photo wall, Martha Stewart, Paula Deen, and Tyler Florence have all made stops here.

All of the baking supplies made me crave something sweet. Luckily, our next stop was the 18th Street branch of The Cupcake Cafe.

Before we even got to the cupcakes, I was surprised and thrilled to discover that it's actually attached to a lovely children's bookstore called Books of Wonder that could practically be the real-life version of The Shop Around the Corner from You've Got Mail. How did I not know about this?

Besides new children's books, they have a section dedicated to vintage editions of children's classics, which were really fun to browse through. I would have loved to buy a vintage edition of Anne of the Island, if only it wasn't $95. (Although that seemed like a bargain compared to the $2500, locked-behind-glass set of original Winnie-the-Pooh books.)

The Cupcake Cafe portion of the store was situated just as a Starbucks Cafes would be in a Barnes and Noble, with the addition of these giant flirty, dancing cupcakes:

The cupcakes are all lavishly decorated with flowers. I tried a vanilla and a chocolate, and Lara tried the maple. The verdict: beautiful to look at, but not the best tasting. Sweet and Magnolia both beat these out in terms of taste, which was okay since we made stops at both of those places too.

After chowing down on cupcakes, we headed up to the Garment District. We hit Mood, where we'd been before, but didn't find anything to "make it work" this time around.

Then we hit M&J Trimmings, where there are walls and walls of buttons, ribbons, appliques, lace, beads, tassles...you name it.

The last stop of our day, and the one I'd been most looking forward to, was Purl SoHo. This was my first time visiting the shop since they'd moved their tiny store into a bigger location.

The new store really is nice, albeit still cramped on a crowded and bustling Saturday.Their sewing and knitted supplies are now combined into a single shop.

Their Liberty fabrics were gorgeous, both for sale on the bolt and on the wall as decoration. I even spotted a couple of patterns that were part of the Target collection way back when.

Of course, I was most interested in the yarn and picked up some skeins to use for new projects.

After seeing Lara off on Sunday, I capped off the weekend with a stop at the Lion Brand Yarn store, where I took advantage of the Birthday Week discount they offer. My weekend yarn purchases include the makings of two hats, a cowl, and a dog sweater:

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. It was even rounded out by some celebrity and pseudo-celebrity sightings- Brooke Shields, walking down the street, and the guy who is dating one of the Kardashians, waiting on a long bathroom line at Le Pain Quotidien.

2 comments:

*Sigh* This makes me miss NYC (more). I love all those Liberty of London fabrics. And I so wish I would have known about the real life The Shop Around the Corner! I'm trying to convince Caleb that we should come back for my birthday in January. Maybe you can take me there then?